gamartin - Slashdot User

Comment Peanuts! (Score 1) 372

by gamartin on Thursday May 03, 2012 @02:22PM (#39880599) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Which Comic Books To Start My 3-Year-Old With?

My kids are really enjoying Peanuts right now from Boom/Kaboom... mix of old and new material, but most important for a 3 year old many of the strips can be "read" without reading (such as Woodstock/Snoopy stories), or with just a little help from parents/siblings.

Gamma Ray Mystery Reestablished By Fermi Telescope 95

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday March 03, 2010 @12:23PM from the back-to-the-drawing-board dept.

eldavojohn writes "New observations from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveal that our assumptions about the 'fog' of gamma rays in our universe are not entirely explained by black hole-powered jets emanating from active galaxies — as we previously hypothesized. For now, the researchers are representing the source of unaccounted gamma rays with a dragon (as in 'here be') symbol. A researcher explained that they are certain about this, given Fermi's observations: 'Active galaxies can explain less than 30 percent of the extragalactic gamma-ray background Fermi sees. That leaves a lot of room for scientific discovery as we puzzle out what else may be responsible.' And so we reopen the chapter on background gamma-rays in the science textbooks and hope this eventually sheds even more light on other mysteries of space — like star formation and dark matter."

Why the First Cowboy To Draw Always Gets Shot 398

Posted by timothy on Thursday February 04, 2010 @04:00PM from the more-guns-less-crime dept.

cremeglace writes "Have you ever noticed that the first cowboy to draw his gun in a Hollywood Western is invariably the one to get shot? Nobel-winning physicist Niels Bohr did, once arranging mock duels to test the validity of this cinematic curiosity. Researchers have now confirmed that people indeed move faster if they are reacting, rather than acting first."

Why Time Flies By As You Get Older 252

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 02, 2010 @11:03PM from the like-a-banana dept.

Ant notes a piece up on WBUR Boston addressing theories to explain the universal human experience that time seems to pass faster as you get older. Here's the 9-minute audio (MP3). Several explanations are tried out: that brains lay down more information for novel experiences; that the "clock" for nerve impulses in aging brains runs slower; and that each interval of time represents a diminishing fraction of life as we age.

Dying Man Shares Unseen Challenger Video 266

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday February 02, 2010 @12:27PM from the new-perspective-on-an-old-tragedy dept.

longacre writes "An amateur video of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion has been made public for the first time. The Florida man who filmed it from his front yard on his new Betamax camcorder turned the tape over to an educational organization a week before he died this past December. The Space Exploration Archive has since published the video into the public domain in time for the 24th anniversary of the catastrophe. Despite being shot from about 70 miles from Cape Canaveral, the shuttle and the explosion can be seen quite clearly. It is unclear why he never shared the footage with NASA or the media. NASA officials say they were not aware of the video, but are interested in examining it now that it has been made available."

Comment How to Choose a 3G Service (Score 2, Interesting) 127

by gamartin on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @08:21AM (#23401158) Attached to: Comparing 3G Networks

Trial and error is key -- once you narrow the cost/feature choices then MUST actually try it out in your circumstances, especially for "difficult" environments like commuter trains. Remember they all have return policies for good reason!

Example: Metro North commuter train in NYC:

first tried AT&T, which worked great at my house but had a major dead zone on the commuter train -- the connection would always break at that location and have to be restarted... unacceptable. Returned everything to AT&T store for a full refund.
consulted a map of cell towers (do your own search), found that Sprint had the closest tower to the difficult dead zone
tried Sprint Mobile Broadband, which worked much better -- no dead zone, smooth continuous connection for the entire commute (at least until the train goes underground near Grand Central), pleased with service

Notes about using Sprint Mobile Broadband:

Sprint somewhat supports linux -- I was able to get the Pantech PX-500 card working on my linux laptop in no time using documentation from the Sprint web site
don't expect blazing speeds -- realistically get several hundred kbps, which is more than fine if your expectations are reasonable
latency is good enough -- I do e-mail with a shell account, and latency is generally no problem
coverage is quite good -- every reasonable location I have tried has had reasonable coverage, including a farm in upstate New York

SUMMARY: I had a bias against being a Sprint customer, but coverage and linux led me there, and I have been quite satisfied with Sprint Mobile Broadband.

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